Warm and spontaneous performances of Chopin's works for cello and piano.

Chopin wrote no music without piano. Apart from his concertos and shorter pieces for piano and orchestra, we find additional instruments only in his handful of works in the realm of chamber music. The earliest of these is a set of Variations on Rossini's Non piu mesta, for flute and piano, composed at age 14. Four years later he turned out a substantial Piano Trio in g minor, and all the rest of his chamber music is for cello and piano: the three works recorded here. One was composed when Chopin was only 19, the next shortly after his arrival in Paris, the last a few years before his death. Each is a document of Chopin's friendship with the French cellist and composer Auguste Franchomme, to whom we owe the existence of the two duos composed in Paris and perhaps the survival of the one composed earlier. Franchomme (1808-1884), like Chopin, established himself as a figure of importance in his teen years. He was court cellist, held first chair in several Parisian orchestras, and at age twenty was one of the founders of the Conservatory Concerts. He composed several works for his own instrument, and, during his long career, Saint-Saens and numerous other composers wrote concertos and other works for him. He was among the several notable figures Chopin met in Paris, and he became his closest friend there. The painter Eugene Delacroix, whom Chopin met a bit later, was the most steadfast of his other French friends. In addition to their musical collaborations, Franchomme helped Chopin assemble a thematic catalogue of his compositions, saw to it that he had medical attention, took him to his relatives in the country for convalescence, and in Chopin's final years looked after his financial accounts. Franchomme was with him to the end, and served as a pallbearer at his funeral.